


Between Us

by orphan_account



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:54:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24133144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: I don't know if writing is for me, but if you're reading this, if you've got even this far, thank you.  sincerely.
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	Between Us

Dan had always thought that intimate moments had to be planned, finely crafted. Not in the sense that you neatly mark it down on a calendar and wait with a chest full of hope, because intimacy was never neat, never quite fit how you think it should fit. But instead the way that together, you mutually decide that right here, in this moment, you were understood. And that was in every sense of the word, special. Intimate.

But more often than not lately these intimate moments seemed to creep up on him, on them both. All thick and suffocating in the best way, something that couldn’t be broken because how could you break something like that, a moment so fused with love and delicacy it made his fingers twitch and his skin sore.

Phil was always so delicate with moments, Dan thought. He treated them like they were something to be admired; softly pushed them to fit, always saw the barely-there sketched edges of a situation and skimmed them just so. It was an art Dan had never quite been able to manoeuvre his way around. Dan always seemed to wade in, so unsure, and put his stamp on something that had already been finely wrapped and packaged. He was working on it.

But right now, on the tour bus that had compassionately carried them from state to state on their first world tour, Phil's weighted huffs of sleep heavy breath swirled and looped in Dan's brain, gently soothing his incessant need to compare, analyse, compare.

In this moment he could step outside of himself but be tucked safe in the caverns of his head all the same, and take in Phil's delicately clasped hands resting in the grey cotton sleeves of the 'owl with breast eyes' jumper. The way his pink flushed lips had fallen slack and the soft tangle of chemically black hair had been pushed up and aside. Pillows propped high against the neck that Dan wanted to lean in and warmly whisper his every passing thought to, the rhythmic rising and falling of evidence that Phil was human. That behind the cotton that quelled the feverish shivers and beneath the warm smell of Phil and the broad crease of ribs which Dan liked to skim his fingers over so much, there was lungs, and deep hot blood, and a muscle that had tried (and succeeded) for so long, thrumming and promising Dan love with every single goddamn thud.

Phil was sparkling proof of a person that had built Dan up so slowly, so kindly, with hands that dripped the gooey thickness of understanding and patience from each and every kissed fingertip. Here, peacefully asleep, with a backdrop of scattered tissues and empty plastic water bottles, the gentle humming of the road in both ears, Phil couldn't possibly be anything other than home to Dan.

He loved him so sweetly he could barely stomach it. It was theirs, and that was all they needed.

-

It was almost an itch, an inclination on the most basic level to wrap up this moment of intimacy and preserve it somewhere safe, somewhere untouchable. Dan grabs his phone and hits the red record button, just like that, feelings raw and deeply personal conveyed and absorbed onto a short clip in Dan's camera roll.

He feels like performing. A camera means eyes and eyes mean judgment, heavy and loud and prodding at something carefully nurtured and delicate, so Dan performs. He pokes Phil's nostril and addresses the camera with his hand and maybe he grabs a thick strand of the hair his fingers love so much to softly tickle his face with, but he doesn't pretend. Doesn't pretend that every wrung out cell in his body wouldn't ooze sticky love for this man stretched out and peaceful next to him on this fucking awful double sized mattress. The man he's built a life worth living with. Dan looses his breath a bit.

When the itchy skimming of hair on his face wakes Phil to an adequate level of consciousness he opens his eyes and shifts, just slightly, closes them again and purses his lips. Dan thinks that the shadow cast from his hand must have somehow shifted the light behind Phil's eyelids because all at once he gazes tiredly up and over at Dan, acknowledges Dan's hand hovering conspicuously above his head and thats it, thats all it takes. The peaceful unawareness that was clinging to Phil like a carefully placed blanket shattered around him in a split second of realisation. All it took was Dan's waving gesture towards the camera. They both laugh and somehow it's okay. They'll talk about it later, he knows.

-

Later comes at the end of the tour when Dan can't endure putting it off anymore than he can endure long distance running. It's starting to hurt. He's been quietly ruminating over those eighteen seconds of footage ever since it became a possibility to share it with their audience in the form of a behind-the-scenes-kind-of-documentary for their tour.  
With editing all the footage they filmed together, sat in a dark dunked room comes a different type of intimacy. There's no one in here but them right now and Dan prefers it better this way, he never has been keen on all the many varieties of editors and producers swarming his head with input, input, input, no matter how much he appreciates it. Him and Phil, that's all they need. That's all they've ever needed.

-

They do talk about it. Phil listens to Dan's fears and thoughts with all of the care and patience that no one ever bothered to show him returned tenfold, and Dan does the same. It's just how they work. They deliberate and carefully manufacture exactly what they want to give of themselves, of each other. They decide to keep it in and Dan's breath comes just a smudge lighter than it did before.

-

In the end it's okay because the tour is done and the fans are happy and Dan and Phil had the best time of their lives. In the end it's okay because the eighteen seconds that they both chose to put in wasn't the whole reflection of it, not even a glimmer. Moments pass, intimate or not and you can't capture any of them, really. Not properly, not wholly. And in the end it's okay because the parts you can never wrap up just tight enough always flutter to somewhere else, somewhere safe, untouched. Dan knows that they will always have those moments tucked safe in the places they share between them

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know if writing is for me, but if you're reading this, if you've got even this far, thank you. sincerely.


End file.
